Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I must admit, it is a healthy debate to be having. I think that it is really important that we are vying to be the renewable capital of Australia. I have to say that the evidence is there that, indeed, South Australia is the renewable energy capital of Australia, and I will go onto establish why. South Australia has the highest percentage of homes with solar panels, at 23 per cent; the most energy sourced from renewables; and the most investment at risk—$2.9 billion of investments in clean energy, and there is a risk that that will go overseas if there is not enough certainty and if the RET is reduced. There are South Australian projects at risk. There is the Ceres wind farm on the Yorke Peninsula—a $1.5 billion investment, and more than 500 jobs. There is the Infigen Energy Woakwine wind farm in the south-east—150 jobs created. There is the Pacific Hydro Keyneton wind farm in the Riverland—more than 500 jobs created. We have Port Augusta, where recently there has been an announcement that the Alinta power stations—the two coal-fired power stations near Port Augusta—will be closed by 2018, which will, indeed, introduce the possibility that South Australia will become the first totally renewable energy state in Australia.

South Australia has 517 accredited solar installers; 16 wind projects of 561 turbines and 1,205 megawatts of capacity. Today, Tindo Solar, which makes the only Australian produced solar panels, and other solar industry representatives, are saying that there will be damaging job losses in South Australia—which is already experiencing significant job losses in many other areas of manufacturing—if the renewable energy target is changed and reduced. The predictions are that large-scale solar will beat wholesale coal power pricing anywhere in Australia by 2020 in less than five years.

When we come back to the closure of the coal fired power stations near Port Augusta, we also know that there is an extremely strong community push—from the residents, from the council and from many others—for a concentrating solar thermal plant. There has been a lot of work done on the feasibility of that plant, with a potential for baseload power to be created there using molten salt. It is a very exciting initiative. There is a lot of enthusiasm in the community and, as I said, from the council, because there has been a long history of damaging health effects from coal fired power stations in Port Augusta. Moving to a solar thermal power station would be an amazing opportunity for South Australia to showcase baseload power. There would be jobs available for the existing power workers to be able to work there and there would also potentially be jobs in manufacturing, in creating the components—the mirrors and the panels—which would be used in any associated wind farms as well.

There are a lot of good things happening in South Australia. It is absolutely imperative that those things are happening in South Australia, because it is a state where there are significant challenges in terms of other manufacturing. It is a state which the current government are ignoring at this stage. If they are insistent on going ahead and allowing the passage of this legislation to further undermine the renewable energy target, that will only make the situation far worse for South Australia. So I urge my colleagues to think seriously about this legislation, to think about the future and to think about what we are doing. I urge them not to be beholden by short-term interests in maintaining and propping up an energy source that we know has health effects, is contributing to climate change and is more expensive than the alternatives; I urge them to vote against this legislation.